The DCD-595 is really a DCD-695 minus its A-B repeat button, pitch control facility and variable output headphone socket.
Plus a 12-step digital volume control ferreted away on a common RC-241 remote handset which, funnily enough, incorporates the A-B repeat feature dropped from the facia.
Rather than sounding ‘louder’, advancing the volume with this player just magnifies the scope of its soundstaging, developing a performance that’s grand without being imposing. You’re drawn into its pool of music, relishing seamlessly integrated instruments from bass, through mid and into the treble.
Incidental shuffles and coughs now sidle out from behind Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, for example, the music paced in a fashion that complements the true scale and dynamics of the event. It’s slightly bass shy, to be sure, but such detail and sophistication is rare at this price.
Significant changes in the digital set-up of Denon’s DCD-595 have robbed it of the robust and confident definition displayed by the DCD-695. However, by contrast the DCD-595 betrays no obvious emphasis of any part of the musical spectrum, encouraging a somewhat smoother and darker brew that proves no less intriguing.
The end result is a machine that plays second fiddle only to Sony’s outrageous CDP-311, leaving us little course but to award Denon with another sure-fire recommendation.
HiFi Wiki:
https://www.hifi-wiki.de/index.php/Denon_DCD-595